Cheating Death
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Death dislikes massacres. When you take the long view - and she always does - they're bad for business. So she decides to do something about Thanos's Snap.


**A/N: I don't own the Avengers. Happy birthday, MegMarch1880! This is a slightly different version of this fix-it then you originally saw.**

* * *

Massacres were bad for business.

Oh, they were good for the quarterly quotas, for getting a nice quick power boost, but long term, they were a disaster.

Because here was the thing: everyone died eventually. One way or another, everyone ended up leaving this mortal coil sooner or later. Later, however, was almost always preferable, because later meant more time to produce more life whether it was in the form of others of their own kind or in pets saved from being put down or even in plants carefully tended in gardens. Death wasn't picky. There was a difference between all those kinds of life, sure, but she got paid to deal with all of them when that life inevitably ran out.

Sustainability was the name of the game, and mass death and destruction was not sustainable.

Or in other words: Sooner or later, Thanos was going to die, and when he did, the two of them were going to have a nice . . . chat.

She felt the ripples in all of reality when the Snap occurred. She felt reality shake when the Stones were destroyed.

Make that nice _long_ . . . chat.

The ripples were general, but the specifics arrived quickly. They arrived in the form of fifty percent of her charges, all now dead, from the unnamed child that had been conceived at the very moment of the Snap to the living planet that had been born at the universe's creation.

The specifics also arrived in the form of Angela Weber, fifteen, who was being driven home by her father on a busy highway when her father abruptly turned to dust. They arrived in the form Katya-Natasha-or-maybe-Pavel-if-it's-a-boy when the mother he was safely wrapped within became ash on the kitchen floor. They arrived in the form of Rick Stand-in, detective, and sixty-three other passengers on the 12:30 to Chicago who survived the Snap but whose pilot and co-pilot did not. They also arrived in the form of the fifty-four people at the gridlocked intersection that the plane crashed down on.

They arrived in the form of Denzel Harrison, whose surgeon vanished during his open heart surgery, and in the form of Lacey Green, age one, whose parents were both snapped and who no one thought to check on until it was too late.

They arrived in the form of Maria DiNozzo, who lost her husband and all three of her children but still had a more than adequate supply of sleeping pills ready to hand.

And that was just Earth. There was also the deep space strainer whose five hundred passengers died of starvation when they lost their entire navigation department. There were the Morbati, who sent a retaliatory strike at the rivals they assumed were responsible for their decimation, and the Holbyta, who knew nothing of aliens or Thanos, and who offered up twenty-five beating hearts to appease what they thought must be the wrath of the gods.

There was also Thanos, courtesy of Thor.

If the laws of reality hadn't already been bent to the breaking point, Death would have sent him a thank you for that in the form a certain treacherous little brother. It would have had the added advantage of getting Loki out of her hair.

Metaphorically speaking, although Death did actually have hair this century. She was experimenting with a softer look. Bleached skulls just weren't quite the professional look she was aiming for anymore.

Chaos was sweeping the stars, and Earth, struggling though it was, fared better than most. Thanos had taken half of her charges; panic, circumstance, and a certain growing instability in reality itself had edged that number up to seven in every ten. And climbing.

And when all of life was gone, even Death must follow.

Which was why she watched the Avengers with considerable interest.

There was potential there. So much potential.

But she had darker sisters. Despair and Apathy were growing fat, and they took a much shorter view of things than she did.

Fortunately, thanks to the Quantum Realm, they had missed Scott.

If Death played chess, she would have said it was their move.

But Death didn't care for any games that required playing fair.

* * *

The first thing Natasha Romanov did upon arrival was to let her face slip into an emotionless mask that almost concealed the terror usual to those who discovered too late there was an afterlife after all. The second thing she did was ask, quite calmly, and politely, "Is this Hell?"

"No." Death looked out over the milling hordes of shades she'd stubbornly refused to guide on. Time was stranger here; she could press her luck for a little longer. "This is waiting."

The spy's eyes swept over it all. "Waiting for what?"

Death smiled.

"A chance to cheat."

* * *

Another Snap later, the crowd thinned out considerably, and Reality was straining at the seams.

Natasha Romanov was among those still there. She looked questioningly at Death.

Death shook her head.

The third Snap struck. Reality trembled on the edge of collapse.

And among those before her was Anthony Stark.

She knew him well. The Merchant of Death, they had called him, and they hadn't been wrong. Even now, he was a common domino in the paths that led to her.

But all paths did eventually. His, too.

His first words upon seeing her were not entirely professional.

Under the circumstances, Death was prepared to ignore it. "Hello, Mr. Stark," she said cheerfully. "Well done. You have just successfully completed the destabilization of reality."

He scrambled to his feet. "What does that mean?"

It meant . . . Oh, things beyond human understanding, but in simpler terms - "It means, Mr. Stark, that the red tape no longer applies, and I get to rearrange things. It means," she said with a sharklike smile, "that I get to cheat."

* * *

Death was not supposed to interferer directly, not even if it meant the end of everything. The unmaking of everything, however . . .

Well, that was another matter entirely. Then, she was _encouraged_ to interfere.

And with the stones used thrice, unmade once, and _time travel_ of all things on the loose . . . Reality was in shreds.

There were many moments she could have chosen, but right now reality was a tower of Jenga blocks about to collapse. If she was going to reach out and steady, she had to choose just the right spot.

A field in Wakanda, moments before the Snap. Thor, high in the air, weapon raised high.

A tiny whisper in Thor's ear.

_Aim for the head._

* * *

Reality - shifted.

Rewritten.

Renewed.

* * *

There were ripples in reality, and, oddly enough, all of them bore her mark. Death wondered what she'd done to cause it.

The ripples were general, and the specifics arrived slowly, staggered out throughout decades and more of time.

The specifics arrived in the form of Angela Weber, ninety-three, dead of heart failure and Rick Stand-in, seventy-five, of cancer.

They arrived as Maria DiNozzo, grandmother, and the first generation of the Morbati to make peace and live long enough to die in their beds.

They arrived as Natasha Romanov, eighty-four, and Anthony Stark, eighty-five.

There was also Thanos, courtesy of a whisper in the wind and Thor.

"What is this place?" Thanos demanded.

"It's where you wait," she told him.

"Wait for what?"

Death smiled. "In your case," she said, "to go to someplace much, much worse."

She waved a hand and two chairs appeared.

"But first," she said, sitting down and leaning forward, you and I need to have a _chat."_


End file.
